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The continued, underwhelming excellence of the Kansas City Chiefs

The Kansas City Chiefs' Jamaal Charles. Wikicommons By Jeffrey Beall - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0,
Expert
8th November, 2016
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The Kansas City Chiefs are the antidote to the idea that the NFL postseason is nothing but a game of roulette.

It feels like every season the Chiefs make the playoffs, and every season they make a soundless, entirely unthreatening exit. They’re good enough to buy a ticket to the dance, but once they get inside they sip on a warm beer by themselves at the room’s edge and watch the louder, more talented teams get to work.

The Chiefs are the ultimate ‘won’t beat themselves’ team. They win games by virtue of having the best turnover differential in the league. Jacksonville lost to them on the weekend by doing all the things that Kansas City doesn’t. The Jags lost a fumble at the goal-line and on special teams, tossed an interception, and gave up a big punt return.

Kansas City didn’t do these things – they bent but never broke, never giving up the big play – and as a result proved true the unlikely hypothetical that you can have a two-game winning streak in 2016 with Nick Foles as your quarterback.

But as high as the basement is on these Chiefs, the ceiling remains low too. Kansas City are 6-2 but their two losses came against the only two playoff teams from last year they’ve faced. Their biggest test, a prime-time showdown with the Steelers, was an exquisite 43-14 failure.

By DVOA the Chiefs rank 20th in offence, ninth in defence, sixth on special teams, and 10th overall. They are the definition of good but not great.

There was hope this season that the KC ceiling might finally be raised. Last year the Chiefs weren’t just ‘good’ by the numbers – they were elite. They were the most rounded team in the NFL, finishing sixth, sixth and seventh in the three phases by DVOA, and fifth overall, ahead of New England.

They annihilated the Texans on the road in the playoffs, and forced the Patriots to sweat out a tense round two.

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Finishing the regular season on a 10-game winning streak, the Chiefs destroyed teams, with six of those wins by double digits, including a beat-down of the Broncos in Denver where they intercepted Peyton Manning four times and sent him to the bench. It was a victory so dominant it harkened back to the other crowning victory of the Andy Reid era, another domination of an eventual Super Bowl champion, when Kansas City put Tom Brady and the Patriots to the sword 41-14 on a famous Monday night at Arrowhead.

But those triumphs have been few and far between. More emblematic of the Reid era is the stretch to end that 2014 season, where the 7-3 Chiefs faltered down the stretch with four losses in five games, failing to match it against the elite and unable to put away the 3-13 Raiders on a bleak Thursday night in Oakland that would ultimately silence Kansas City’s year.

The Andy Reid Chiefs, though, are anything but a failure. In fact, they’re a raging success. While super squads like Arizona and Carolina flaunt losing records, and teams quarterbacked by Aaron Rodgers, Andrew Luck, Drew Brees and Phil Rivers can’t get on the positive side of the win-loss ledger, the Chiefs, in the NFL’s strongest division, continue their quest to perpetually end the year 11-5 with Alex Smith at quarterback.

It’s a remarkable achievement and a testament to Reid’s coaching. But it’s a team that seems destined to max out as ‘impressively innocuous’, which begs the question: is it worthwhile making the playoffs every year if you’re never going to go anywhere once you get there?

The Chiefs are a parallel to the Hornets in the NBA – another expertly coached team that seems content with a ceiling of advancing one round in the playoffs, and, if everything breaks right, maybe two. It’s not the worst life. Fans in Buffalo would die for such an existence.

But with Alex Smith at quarterback and the lack of explosive offensive talent on their roster, the Chiefs are never winning the Super Bowl. Sure, Eli Manning and Joe Flacco have both won titles – players that, overall, Smith might equal in terms of numerical effectiveness – but those are high variance quarterbacks capable of putting on a Brady costume for a four-week stretch. Smith is very much stuck in his Alex Smith costume.

The upside of the Chiefs this year was tied to how their two most talented players – Jamaal Charles and Justin Houston – would return from injury. Kansas City finished in the elite last season without Charles and with Houston wounded – this year, perhaps their return could propel them even further.

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Charles looks finished, and even if he does return for the playoffs he won’t have time to get back up to speed. Houston, the team’s best and most important player, is still recovering from a mysterious knee injury, the severity of which has seemingly always been understated.

Houston should return this season, and when he does he’ll combine with the excellent Dee Ford to re-ignite a pass rush that has been lacking. Smith will likely be back starting next week, and Jeremy Maclin’s injury doesn’t seem too serious. The Chiefs will soon be intact, and in a wide open AFC, that should be enough to ensure their fourth winning season in a row, and their third trip to the postseason in four years.

But once they get there, it feels inevitable that they’ll merely be a resilient sideshow to the fireworks in Pittsburgh and Oakland or the dominance of New England. Once again, their great achievement will be in falling just short of the ultimate achievement.

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